Marijuana Blog

While a national cannabis advocacy group works to bring down the beast of prohibitionary times for every adult citizen in the state of Maine, proponents for medical use have chosen to fight the organizers of this all-important mission rather than tender their support because they believe that full legalization will breed the evils of Big Marijuana.

When representatives for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol showed up at the Secretary of State’s office in Augusta on Monday to deliver over 100,000 signatures supporting their initiative aimed at legalizing recreational herb, members of the medical sector, who seem to oppose the concept of anyone other than “patients” being allowed to freely use cannabis, were waiting along the sidelines to aggressively persecute the group for wanting to tax and regulate weed in a manner similar to beer.

This year could be big one for marijuana legalization, with states like Arizona, Maine and Vermont likely to jump on the bandwagon, which is already led by Alaska, Colorado and Washington. As of June, marijuana was legalized in some way in 23 states and Washington D.C, proving that a revolution is already underway.

But federally, marijuana is still considered a Schedule I drug — along with heroin and LSD — meaning that it has a high potential for abuse. That's left both the industry and consumers in a confusing gray area, since in states like Washington, people over the age of of 21 can walk into a commercial dispensary to buy an ounce of marijuana.

Today, the California Medical Association (CMA) – representing more than 41,000 physician members statewide — announced its formal endorsement of the ballot measure known as the Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act.

First, the impacts of marijuana in California can be monitored, researched, tightly regulated and, where necessary, mitigated to protect the public health &

Second, improper diversion by non-symptomatic patients into California’s medical marijuana system can be reduced.

In addition, CMA does not as a matter of policy encourage the use of marijuana and discourages smoking. But, ultimately, its members believe that the most effective way to protect the public health is to tightly control, track and regulate marijuana and to comprehensively research and educate the public on its health impacts, not through ineffective prohibition.